"Heartbreak Hotel" — 8 weeks
"I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" — 1 week
"Don't Be Cruel" / "Hound Dog" — 11 weeks
"Love Me Tender" — 5 weeks
"Too Much" — 3 weeks
"All Shook Up" — 8 weeks
"(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" — 7 weeks
"Jailhouse Rock" — 7 weeks
There's dominance and then there's the first eighteen months of Elvis Presley's reign. It's impressive enough that he had eight number one hits in the US but to have spent fifty weeks at the top of the singles charts is a whole other thing. (That's just shy of a year, you know) During this span, everyone else combined for a total of thirty-six weeks. While the likes of Drake and Taylor Swift have obliterated many old American chart records, it's still incredible that he managed to have five singles spend at least seven weeks on top. Look at "Love Me Tender": it's one of The King's signature songs, it was at number one for just over a month and it brings down the average a bit. Unreal.
But this blog is all about Canada's singles charts where Elvis didn't quite dominate to the same extent. In part, this can be attributed to lateness. A weekly survey that isn't established until the middle of 1957 is inevitably going to miss out. When CHUM finally began publishing a national chart "All Shook Up" was the maiden number one but it only had a week on top before being usurped by Pat Boone's "Love Letters in the Sand". "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" managed to be equally big on both sides of the world's longest undefended border but this would prove to be Elvis' lone gargantuan smash in Canada.
"Teddy Bear" was huge but arguably the main reason it hit as big as it did was because of timing. Anything coming in the midst of imperial period Elvis was bound to be massive. There's a reason why it's one of his more obscure hits like "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You'" and "Too Much" rather than the others listed above which are still remembered by a mainly ageing proportion of the population. That said, his imperial peak was still a going concern so why was follow-up "Jailhouse Rock" a number one for just one lousy, pathetic week?
It's difficult to say but it certainly didn't help that he was done touring Canada by the autumn of 1957. As I have already discussed in this blog, Elvis made a handful of appearances north of the border that summer with a final show in Vancouver in September but he would never return. On the other hand, the five concerts he performed in Canada are still five more than anywhere else outside of North America. TV spots had also dried up following a trio of famous performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. If Canadian DJ's either disapproved or had grown sick of The King, hearing him on the radio could've become a challenge. The one place to really see and hear him? On the big screen.
"Teddy Bear" had been released in conjunction with Loving You, Elvis' first lead role in a Hollywood feature. Not content to milk it, he already had a second movie out in time for the Christmas season, Jailhouse Rock. Along with Love Me Tender, which came out a year earlier in which he played a supporting character who (gasp!) died, and King Creole, which followed just before his induction into the US armed forces, these are the films which hinted at the serious actor he could've been. Yet even among these pictures, the story of a young Vince Everett languishing in prison only to discover a talent for singing stands out. With its famous dance sequence, Jailhouse Rock is impossible to separate from the hit single of the same name which is a rarity for him. The title of Elvis' first film would be awkwardly changed from The Reno Brothers to Love Me Tender in order to connect it with the hit single of the same name. "Loving You" evidently wasn't even considered commercial enough to be released as an A-side. Future soundtrack hits would be in further service to the increasingly B movie quality of his motion pictures post-Army. Thus, Jailhouse Rock is the only title in which film and soundtrack hit could be seen as equals.
Having said that, I should admit that I've never seen it. I meant to recently but I confess I couldn't find the time. But I will as soon as I can. In any case, I am confident about what I wrote in the preceding paragraph which means the movie must be really good because the song is just shy of being a banger. A massive upgrade on "Teddy Bear" and even a marked improvement on "All Shook Up", it still isn't quite at the level of those remarkable '56 hits so it doesn't merit full marks. Still, his preceding hit could have easily given listeners the feeling that Elvis was going downhill so it's to his credit that he was able to dismiss the any naysayers — for now, at least.
In the US, "Jailhouse Rock" was given the double A-side treatment along with fellow soundtrack number "Treat Me Nice" (despite the fact that it somehow also managed to peak at number twenty-seven on its own) but the two had been split up in Canada. Whereas "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog" each managed to pull their own weight — it's actually hard to believe they were released together, a quality it shares with the only other double A that is superior to it, "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" — there's really no reason for the pretense of egalitarian principles in this instance. One side is damn-near exceptional, the other is just Elvis going through the motions. While the fact that it was recorded at the same September '57 sessions that resulted in the Elvis' Christmas Album ought to have been a red flag, he arguably put far more care into the seasonal favourites than on this tossed off bit of filler.
Loaded with humour that mercifully avoids homophobic prison innuendo (though it is suggested) and with a beat that makes it one of the most addictive tunes in his vast discography, there is plenty to admire in "Jailhouse Rock". Listening to it pretty much constantly over the past few days, I wonder why it hasn't been covered more often. Sure, Elvis set the bar pretty high but there are places others could have gone with it. For one, wouldn't it have been nice had Johnny Cash performed it at one of his prison shows? The crowds were up for having a laugh and it could've been yet another show stealer for At Folsom Prison or At San Quinten (and the more obscure and much less enjoyable På Österåker, recorded at a jail in Sweden, could've definitely used it)
Fame would really begin to take its toll on Elvis in the sixties and seventies but there's a good chance it had already become a prison for him in many ways. The looming military induction, too, would have been something he couldn't have been looking forward to. As such "Jailhouse Rock" proved to be the perfect final burst of rock 'n' roll: one that nodded towards the early rush of thrilling hits, one that captured the cloistered life he had begun to lead and one that looked towards the more regimented lifestyle that awaited him in Germany just a few months' later. And with that, goodbye imperial period — though the hits would keep on coming.
Score: 9
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